There’s a lot of good discussion going on at the moment in the Finnish blogosphere about Wireless Internet and its uses. Schizo-Janne wrote about his dislike for the fact that Finland is not doing enough to stay in the lead of technological innovation. Janne takes this further in his blog and continues on the idea of innovation and the freedom WiFi creates for innovativeness.

I have to say I agree with both gentlemen 100%. Finland is not doing enough for creating the internet infrastructure in our country. What people don’t usually understand is that availability of Internet is becoming an essential part of our information society, just like street lights, sidewalks and paved roads. As society develops, the standard of living increases and more and more things are taken for granted.

However, availability of Wireless Internet should not only be taken for granted, but also seen as a great platform for innovation – just like Janne put it. Once you have availability of internet in most parts of the country – you can begin to see small companies emerging and taking advantage of this platform.

For example, once GSM became a dominant platform for mobile phones and the customer base grew large enough, tens of companies offering content for mobile phones emerged. The reason behind these is that their business plans saw the GSM network an open network in a sense that they did not have to talk to other parties (not to that extent the application providers have to at least) for setting up their business.

Janne talks about the difficulty of creating applications for mobile phones and new businesses in his post. I have to agree with this as I’ve seen it first hand, when Futurice was launching their Kuvat Kavereille (a photo sharing) service – they had to talk to numerous parties in order for the business model to work. This could be fundamentally different in an WiFi space where internet access can be seen as a part of the everyday infrastructure of a modern society.

This indeed creates a very big freedom to innovate that the Finnish government has not yet seen the advantage of. Are there any other people who would like to see a WiFi.ee kind of network being built into Finland? I would seriously like to help if there were other enthusiasts like me.